“Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”

— Mary Oliver, West Wind, 1997

About Mary Oliver

1935 – 2019

American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner (1984), known for her nature poetry, including 'The Summer Day'.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

“You do not have to be good.”

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

“Each of us lives only now, this brief instant.”

“Life is our dictionary.”

“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.”

“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.”

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”